ABSTRACT
The evacuation of vulnerable population (both residents and transients) is an efficacious non-structural mitigation strategy in response to a vast majority of the disasters. Amongst the transients (tourists, shoppers, employees etc.), tourists tend to be the most vulnerable group because of their unfamiliarity with the place and language. The challenges of evacuating a huge tourist population were strongly evident in a developing country scenario during the evacuation before cyclone ‘Fani’ in 2019 which pinpointed the inadequacies in evacuation planning. Contrary to the planned cyclone evacuation, short-notice evacuations at Uttarkhand before flash floods in 2013 highlighted the lack of a record-keeping mechanism for estimating the aerial evacuation demand. Unfortunately, during both the evacuation operations, potential evacuees resisted from getting evacuated. The article advances some generic and specific policy recommendations pertaining to the evacuation of tourists based on a detailed review of the existing literature and the two case studies. An in-depth review of the scenarios suggests the necessity of a database development, robust demand estimation mechanism, technological improvements, and delivery of multi-lingual warning message illustrative of the consequences. Strong co-ordination between different stakeholders would also improve the evacuation operations of the floating population.
